Word lovers love the people who define our words, the lexicographers who spend their time identifying new construction and new usage and tracing etymology and relationships.

These are among the rock stars of the word world, and they share a symbiotic relationship with the copyeditors. Copyeditors turn to the dictionaries to decide whether a word is appropriate, and lexicographers look for evidence of word usage in written text.

The word culture entered the language in its most common forms less than two centuries ago, but in all its forms it is in the top 1,000 most-common words in American English. According to the Corpus of Contemporary American English, culture ranks 612, making it more frequently seen than brother, marriage, opportunity, and stuff.

If you want to make a big splash for the word lover on your gift list, you can’t go wrong by wrapping all six volumes of the Dictionary of American Regional English. It will set you back $740, or $650 if you skip the index and supplemental material that comes with Volume VI.

If that seems costive (Ozarks) or spendy (Northwest), you could go with an online subscription. Less impressive than a stack of books that won’t quite fit under the tree but perhaps more useful, the digital subscription to DARE can be had for the holidays for half price: $75.

When I edit for business clients, I rarely see them refer to anything anymore; they reference.

Reference is usually a noun. When it is used as a verb, it traditionally meant to add references. I’ve referenced an article or two in my day, but I never called it that. To reference a scholarly article, by this definition, is not to read it or cite it, but to add citations to it.